


you're in my veins

by magisterequitum



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Pemberley arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The idea won't leave her mind that maybe, just maybe, he hadn't really been talking about Bing in the video.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're in my veins

Lizzie's left a bit stunned after her latest video. 

She'd wanted to find someone to help her play out the scenario, but she'd never thought of Darcy doing it. Or that he'd even want to do it, let alone go find a hat and a bow tie to complete the costume. As she'd slipped on the plaid shirt, her fingers most definitely did not shake with rising adrenaline, and her throat definitely didn't get dry, and there was no flutter in her stomach. Not at all. 

And during it, with the red light blinking on her camera, she'd been even more surprised. 

She watches the playback, editing parts and readying them to be stitched together. Her finger taps on the pause and she stares at what she sees. Her face in profile, her mouth lax with her lips downturned ever so slightly, a tiny wrinkle in the crease of her brow. She turns to look to the left. His face isn't nearly as in profile but it's utterly fixated on her. There's nothing abrasive or arrogant in his demeanor. It's entirely open, his face, and she feels as if she's intruding. Entirely silly as it is actually her. 

She thinks back to what they'd been saying during that moment. 

_'You should ask him.'_

She has no reason to feel like a voyeur, looking at the screen, because he'd been talking about Bing. Bing and Jane. That had been it. 

Lizzie changes the shot, pressing fast forward. 

 

 

 

She runs into Gigi on Friday. 

Or well the girl runs into her, making a pit stop in her office. She's bright and cheerful with an orange dress and bright earrings that remind her too much of Lydia. Gigi's already talking about lunch and this and some party event, and Lizzie can't take it. 

Her mouth drops open and the words come out before she can stop them. "Gigi, whatever you're playing with me and your brother, you can't do that." 

The other girl's face falls, her mouth opening and closing as her fingers curled around the binder in her hands. "What?"

Lizzie sighs because she hadn't meant to sound so harsh, and she knew her tone had been just that, harsh, but she'd thought about it all night and she'd needed to say it. "I'm sorry," she lifts her hand up in an apologetic gesture. "It's just, I can't." 

Gigi smoothes out her skirt and sits in the other chair in Lizzie's office. She bites her lip and taps her fingers on the plastic vinyl of the binder. Her eyebrows slant down towards her nose as she says, "I don't understand. I watched your videos and you two seemed great." 

She moves her head, tilting. "You watch my videos?" 

"Well, yeah. Of course I do. I wasn't lying when I said I was a fan." 

That response illicits a smile from her lips. "Right." 

"Did something else happen?" Gigi shifts forward, leaning closer. "Did something happen that you didn't put in? Did Will say something? Because sometimes he doesn't mean--" 

"No," Lizzie waves her hand in the space between them. "No it's not like that. There wasn't anything else." 

Gigi narrows her gaze. "Then I'm confused."

"Gigi," Lizzie says, taking a deep breath. "I wasn't the nicest person to your brother, to Darcy. I said some awful things, in hindsight, on the videos. But some of them I meant. And there's other things, things about Jane," she pauses. "Things I can't just forget and overlook right now." 

Her face drops, but Gigi nods, her mouth twisting in a little reluctant grin. "Alright. I'm sorry." 

What she doesn't tell Gigi is that her minds split between remembering Jane and Bing and then also how Darcy has been in the last few weeks, how completely different he's been in person. That for a while she'd not been able to sleep last night and the only image stuck behind her eyelids had been the frozen screen shot on her computer of their faces. 

What she does do is offer lunch as a way to make up for her abrasiveness and nearly crushing all of Gigi's hopes and dreams. 

 

 

 

"I don't know, Charlotte, I just don't."

" _Know what?_ " She can hear Charlotte banging something around in the kitchen on the other side of the phone. 

Lizzie frowns at her phone. "Aren't you paying attention?" 

" _You keep talking in circles and I'm getting confused._ "

She rolls her eyes. "About Jane. And Bing. You saw the video." 

" _Oh, you mean whether I think Bing's still interested?_ " The sound of rushing water and Charlotte must have been getting her dinner ready.

"Yeah, that." From here, Lizzie can see that she's failed in keeping up with her house owner's plants. The fern is drooping in the window. She'll have to remember to do it after she eats. There's a pitcher in the pantry she's supposed to be using. 

" _Well, d'uh, I think anyone can see that Bing still likes Jane and Jane likes Bing_ ," Charlotte pauses and all the sound dies from over the line. " _But are you sure you're asking about that or the fact that Darcy clearly so wasn't talking about Bing?_ "

"Don't be ridiculous, Charlotte." 

She's definitely not asking that. At all. 

 

 

 

Running into hallways becomes something of their thing. 

She can't quite accuse him of lurking because, well, it is his building, but then that would mean that she's lurking too. Which she's not, lurking as an excuse to find him and talk to him. 

But fate handles it for them. 

Lizzie comes around a corner, her hands full of notes from the meeting she'd just sat in on, and runs straight into a rather firm chest. "What?" she exclaims and bounces back as hands cup her elbows to steady her. 

"Oh," she says when she sees who it is. "Darcy, I'm sorry." 

Darcy's hands drop away from her elbows, hanging awkwardly in the air before settling jerkily back at his sides. "Lizzie."

He stares at her for several seconds, face still, and Lizzie can't stand the awkwardness. 

"I'm so sorry," she repeats to give noise into the silence stretching between them. "I wasn't paying attention well enough." 

That spurs him into movement and it's brilliant in a way to watch his face contort and flood with expression. She's mesmerized in a way. 

"No, no, it's quite fine. Clumsy of me. I wasn't looking either. Are you alright?" He's earnest, head tilted towards her, anxious for her answer. 

"I'm fine. Promise!" She smiles at him and then winces at her over enthusiastic tone. She shakes her head, remembering what's been eating away at her mind nonstop. "Darcy, can I ask you something?" 

He blinks and straightens, holding her gaze. "Of course. You are welcome to ask me anything, Lizzie. If I can give it to you, I will." 

His open honesty nearly makes her wince as she asks, "Why did you convince Bing to leave Jane?" 

She nearly feels like an asshole there in the middle of the hallway with the way Darcy's face constricts and blanches all in a matter of five seconds. But she can't take it back even if karma might get her back tomorrow. 

Darcy stares at her, struggling to find an answer it seems. Or perhaps picking through them. Finally, he clears his throat and says, "Because I thought I was protecting my friend." 

Her tongue unfurls in her mouth where she'd curled it back and something in her chest releases at that. 

"I was wrong, Lizzie, and I apologize--"

"No," she cuts him off. "I was wrong." 

 

 

 

That night she composes an email to Bing telling him that Jane is in LA. 

She hits the send button while thinking about how wrong she'd been when telling Jane how to act, how she'd contributed too, and how she hopes the two of them will talk. 

 

 

 

There's comfort now in that her thoughts are more settled. She gets a little happy face text from Jane and doesn't even need to read the words that come after to know what's up. She reads them anyway. 

But she's not settled. 

No, she's still caught staring at the ceiling of her borrowed bedroom, her mind jumbled with how she'd been so right and so wrong at the same time. Darcy's what she thought and what she didn't think. And doesn't that make her real and unreal, what parts of her were true. 

Lizzie climbs out of bed and crosses the room to where she's set up a little work desk for herself. The chair's scratchy underneath her legs where her sleep shorts don't cover while she uncaps the camera and turns it on. 

She breathes in. Hears the cars from the street outside, the gentle hum of the A/C, the ice machine in the fridge turning over as it dropped a recent freeze, and the tinkling of the aquarium's water from the living room. 

The camera beeps and the red light comes on. She'll never show it to anyone, it'll stay forever in the darkness of her bedroom, and she'll delete it in the morning. But for now she opens her mouth and whispers out, 

"My name is Lizzie Bennet, and I was completely wrong about William Darcy." 

 

 

 

A week later and she totters on too tall of heels across the rooftop pool of Pemberley Digital. There's people still back in the ballroom being used for the party, the sounds of music and laughter spilling out. She's not interested in them though. 

No her target is currently sitting in the gazebo that's past the pool. This place really is ridiculously nice, she thinks, and then tells herself to focus. 

Darcy stands when she comes up the steps, turning to look at her. "Lizzie. I only meant to be gone for a few minutes. I needed some air." 

Lizzie smiles. "Parties not your thing?" 

Darcy's lips quirk. "I am not overly fond of people." 

"Just some people, right?" She asks, stepping up into the wooden structure. It's pretty and nice, a few vines twined around the pillars. Very zen and relaxing, just like the description. 

"Just some people," he echoes, staring at her. 

Swallowing, Lizzie turns her head back to him, forsaking the flowers and their view. "I wanted to see you. I haven't really seen you all week." 

"I was," he clears his throat, fingers awkwardly picking at his side. "trying to give you space. I thought you might be mad." 

"Mad?" Her face draws down in confusion, thinking about why he'd think she was mad at him. She racks her brain for what's been happening lately, and then it hits her. Sometimes she really didn't say the right thing. She laughs. "I'm not mad at you."

Darcy looks confused and startled, taking a step back. 

"You think I'm mad about Bing and Jane, right? I said 'I was wrong' right? I wasn't talking about you, Darcy. I was talking about me." 

"Oh," he says softly, the line of his shoulders dropping, the stress visibly easing away. 

"But," she continues, pressing herself to finish what she's been wanting to ask him for what seems like weeks now. She steps closer. "you weren't talking about Bing in the video were you?" 

Up close it's so much easier to read his expressions. She's not quite an expert yet, but she wants to be, and so she's been cataloguing all parts of him to store away as her own. "No, I was not." 

Laughter comes muted from the party still going on further back inside the building. There's a bit of a breeze that moves the skirt of her dress around her knees. She thinks she might even be able to hear her heart beating inside her chest, so loud it seems. 

"Do you still like me?" 

It's the question she most desperately wants and doesn't want an answer to. This isn't her darkened bedroom though or a camera that no one will ever see the recording of. 

His hand reaches out to stroke her side just ever so slightly, the barest of touches. She shivers while he prepares his answer, and then he says, "My mind has not changed." 

Lizzie leans up, her heel popping out of her pump, and kisses him. Her mind only thinks of him then.


End file.
